Reduction of Aerodynamic Forcing inTransonic Turbomachinery Numerical Studies on Forcing Reduction Techniques

Sammanfattning: Due to more and more aggressive designs in turbomachinery, assuring the structural integrity of its components has become challenging. Also influenced by this trend is blade design, where lighter and slimmer blades, in combination with higher loading, lead to an increased risk of failure, e.g. in the form of blade vibration. Methods have been proposed to reduce vibration amplitudes for subsonic engines, but cannot directly be applied to transonic regimes due to the additional physical phenomena involved. Therefore the present work investigates numerically the influence of two methods for reducing blade vibration amplitudes in transonic turbomachines, namely varying the blade count ratio and clocking. As it is known that clocking affects the efficiency, the concurrent effects on vibration amplitudes and efficiency are analyzed and discussed in detail.For the computational investigations, the proprietary Fortran-based non-linear, viscous 3D-CFD solver VolSol is applied on two transonic compressor cases and one transonic turbine case. In order to reduce calculation time and to generate the different blade count ratios a scaling technique is applied.The first and main part of this work focuses on the influence of the reduction techniques on aerodynamic forcing. Both the change in blade count ratio and clocking position are found to have significant potential for reducing aerodynamic force amplitudes. Manipulation of the phasing of excitation sources is found herein to be a major contributor to the amplitude variation. The lowest stimulus results are achieved for de-phased excitation sources and results in multiple blade force peaks per blade passing. In the case of blade count ratio variation it was found that blockage for high blade count ratios and the change in potential field size have significant impacts on the blade forcing. For the clocking investigation, three additional operating points and blade count ratios are analyzed and prove to have an impact on the force reduction achievable by clocking.The second part of the work evaluates the influence of clocking on the efficiency of a transonic compressor. It is found that the efficiency can be increased, but the magnitude of the change and the optimal wake impingement location depend on the operating point. Moreover it is shown that optimal efficiency and aerodynamic forcing settings are not directly related. In order to approximate the range of changes of both parameters, an ellipse approximation is suggested.